


Victory and Death - The Aftermath

by roboemma



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Wars Saved, Order 66, Star Wars - Freeform, The Clone Wars - Freeform, The Siege of Mandalore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24190423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboemma/pseuds/roboemma
Summary: Rex and Ahsoka in the early moments following Order 66.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	Victory and Death - The Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Victory and Death gutted me, like falling in love and being dumped at the same time. What a masterpiece. Anyways, what’s it called when your fix-it fic fixes nothing and instead further expounds upon the sadness?

It quickly became clear there were no survivors. Neither knew exactly how to feel about it. About anything.

They picked through the rubble anyways, their shattered bodies numb and unfeeling as they pulled trooper after trooper from the smoldering fires of the Star Destroyer. Words drained away, and they worked in eerie silence together to pull Rex’s dead brothers from the rubble.

Maybe there had been some unspoken hope. Some sliver of reservation that, _maybe_ , when they found them, that they’d have snapped out of it. That the destruction of the ship would have been the end of the nightmare. But no.

When they found Jesse’s body, Rex had fallen to his knees and wept, clinging to the lifeless form of his brother and begging like a child that it could be different. It was all Ahsoka could do, to wrap her arms around his shoulders and ride out the pain with him.

They’d buried the bodies they could find, the very few they could reach through the still-burning wreckage, marked their graves with their helmets, Ahsoka’s own face staring at her on the painted visages of their visors. She wondered of the point of it all. The injustice of it. She wondered where the bodies of all the troopers taken during this three year war had ended up.

Had they less of a resting place than even these troops here?

Up until now, during the course of the day’s events, she’d saved all her sorrow and empathy for those affected around her. When she let her lightsaber fall to the dust and ash at her feet, she finally let herself feel the first bit of fear and agony for herself.

Where was she to go from here?

She could feel Rex’s eyes on her, waiting by the Y-Wing. She turned and paced to meet him.

They were both terrified of the impending idleness.

Rex looked younger, his face slightly swollen with the tears he’d shed that day and the tired slackness of what emotion had settled in their place. She met his eyes, kind and soft as they were, and felt the hollow rot of guilt in her stomach in response.

Could she have spared him this pain if she’d only sacrificed herself? Had she really helped him by removing his inhibitor chip? Would the 332nd still be alive if she’d just submitted to this new galactic order?

No; she couldn’t go down this path. Rex had warned her. With his last bits of lucidity, he’d managed the words, “Find him. Find Fives.” A desperate plea for help. She’d done what he’d wanted.

There were many things they needed to do next. They both sported blaster burns, yet untreated. They needed to move, get out of this place and away from the glaring record of their location in case someone came looking. They needed to talk. But instead they both wordlessly agreed to climb back into the seats of the landed Y-Wing.

They needed to rest, too, after all.

Ahsoka could feel her anxiety mounting, alone in her separated section of the cockpit. She’d spent months on her own on Coruscant when she’d left the Jedi. She’d never felt the galaxy this empty before. She couldn’t sense… anyone. Only the death around her. She felt untethered.

She climbed out of her seat and took the few steps towards the nose of the ship to the open canopy where Rex sat in the pilot’s seat, already on the edge of unconsciousness. She slipped in feet first, and he stirred, startled awake.

“Commander?” he queried, as she dropped down into the cockpit, just a bit of alarm in his voice in anticipation of what had gone wrong now.

She settled with her legs thrown partially overtop his, for the cramped quarters of the space, and didn’t care that there was nothing forgiving about the hard planes of his armor.

She wrapped her hands around her arms, crossed over her front under her cloak, and let her head fall on the scorched leather of Rex’s pauldron.

“Don’t feel like being alone right now,” she just said numbly.

Rex was frozen for a few beats, as if unsure how to respond. Then she felt him slowly relax, arms settling back at his sides. More quickly than she thought they’d both be able, sleep took them.

* * *

There was only so much fuel in the Y-Wing. Republic Y-Wings also garnered attention. They’d have to be smart.

They landed the ship on the outskirts of a moderately-sized city on a nearby-but-not-too-nearby backwater, a place small enough to be insignificant, but large enough that newcomers or passers-through wouldn’t immediately draw attention from locals. As they pulled packs and supplies from the ship, Ahsoka gestured to Rex’s figure.

“I know you won’t want to hear this, but I think that may be a little loud for where we’re going,” she said.

Rex looked down at his armor, the plates having seen better days, and nodded at her. 

“We’ll adapt,” he responded simply. It seemed a bigger statement than it was.

From the same cloth tatters that Ahsoka had sourced her own cloak, Rex packed away the majority of his armor and disguised the rest with the makeshift coverings. Then they began their long trek into town.

They’d had little trouble communicating when they’d been making their escape in the height of the chaos aboard the Star Destroyer. Adrenaline and necessity had proven to be greatly motivating.

Now, in the wake of the aftermath, conversation felt challenging. Spending hours in separate cockpit compartments while travelling through space did little good for promoting natural discourse, and as the shock wore on, so did their silence. So they settled on tasks, the only attainable thing right now. They need fuel for the ship. Food. Supplies. A change of clothes.

When they finally found a gutted, empty apartment with a locking door, Rex wasted no time in calibrating its security systems. Ahsoka wasn’t sure how long they would be able to stay there; she didn’t imagine either of them would want to, but they were both dead on their feet. She hadn’t been able to sleep during their flight, didn’t figure Rex had managed much, either. She would take any measure of time at all; just a couple of hours to rest her eyes somewhere other than the ship where she could stretch her legs out the whole way. The apartment was tiny, a dormitory more than anything, with all its furniture in one room and a tiny closet for a ‘fresher at the back of it. Ahsoka dazedly slid up onto the table that was pushed to one side of the room, her feet dangling in the air and throbbing with the relief of no longer supporting her weight.

Satisfied with his final security measure, Rex let his pack bounce heavily onto the bed that was pushed lengthwise against the back wall, then began absently stripping off what remaining armor plates he had on. She understood the underlying sense of urgency to his actions: she wanted to be rid of the things that made her what she was, too.

He turned away and sat on the floor, propping his back against the frame of the bed. He pulled his knees up and grasped one wrist in his opposite hand, letting his forearms rest on his knees. He stayed still like that, saying nothing. Ahsoka stared absently at his profile, thinking he looked very small, and not just for the lack of bulk the armor normally gave him. Rex had a glassed-over look in his unblinking, unseeing eyes. He gazed off at an indeterminate point on the opposite wall, lips parted just slightly and looking appropriately numb.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, after a time.

Ahsoka blinked. There was a brief, perplexed pause during which she was unsure of what had been said. Rex had blurted the words out of nowhere; now they hung in the air while Ahsoka interpreted them. Rex hadn’t shifted his position, hadn’t looked at her. Ahsoka felt her face grow hot.

“I’m... sorry...?” she repeated his words on accident, apologizing for missing what he had meant.

“When you left the Order. For everything that we did to you,” Rex elaborated sedately.

It seemed wholly unimportant compared to everything that had just happened. His eyes, focused on their spot on the wall, looked tired, his body, weary. He was somewhere, and some _when,_ far away. 

“When the Jedi... when the army told us to track you down and bring you in, we did it,” he explained. “We trusted their judgment, trusted them not to harm you, trusted that they would treat you with the dignity you deserved. We were blind to the fact that they were using us to get to you; we were all complacent in it.”

Ahsoka didn’t know how to respond. Why was _this_ what he had brought up? She’d never once blamed the clones for their part in her wrongful arrest for Barriss Offee’s crimes. Blamed the Jedi for abandoning her, yes, blamed the Republic for throwing her under the speeder… but the clones had only ever been a tool both those parties had used against her.

Maybe she did understand what Rex was getting at; this wasn’t the first time she’d had to run for her life from clone troopers. It sparked a memory.

_The sensation of a gunship humming beneath her thighs, her head lolling limply on her shoulders as she recovered from the effects of a stun blast. On one side of her, Wolffe, with his fingers dug too hard into her shoulder, as if to make sure she wouldn’t leave the seat -- Ahsoka had been barely conscious, so there was no threat of that. And on her other side, Rex, his hand propped around the curve of her shoulder as though to make sure she didn’t buckle to the floor and hurt herself, his fingers only pressing gently into her skin to correct the way she swayed with the rocking of the ship. Wolffe had shot her; she had been captured trying to prove her innocence. Rex’s boots were all she could see with her chin tucked to her collarbone and swimming in and out of consciousness. She had tried to form words, tried to appeal to him, but couldn’t manage the sounds. She’d settled for leaning into his grip and hoping that she could trust his judgment._

In the now, Rex continued to speak, and she refocused on the present.

“You were one of us,” he said thickly, then let out a disbelieving puff of breath. “We should have never let them made us hunt you.”

He finally broke his eye contact with the wall and met her gaze, looking stricken.

“And then I let them-... then _I did_ the same thing to Fives.” The words came out strained, the guilt ringing painfully in his voice.

Rex shook his head tightly, emanating dismay and frustration.

“I stood by and watched while good men, _my_ men, died for causes they believed in, who took risks against orders that they _knew_ were wrong, while I was complacent. People who took shots for me, while I let them shoulder the responsibility for _my_ inaction,” Rex confided as though it were a confession, voice gaining strength, before dipping back into bitterness. “We lost _you_ , and we lost _Fives_... and then I looked around one day and suddenly the 501st was starting to look unrecognizable to me.”

He swallowed, and Ahsoka found it impossible to look away from his eyes locked on hers.

“So I made a promise to myself,” he professed. “I wasn’t going to let it happen again. The next thing that happened, that didn’t feel right, I wasn’t going to just stand idly by.” He touched a hand briefly to the bacta bandage on the side of his head. “And that was a promise to you, too,” he said. “I _will_ protect you this time.”

The conviction in his words was matched by the perceptible adrenaline tremor that had started in his arms. He swallowed audibly before he finally looked away again.

He didn’t expect her to speak, or react or respond, was not requesting her blessing or asking forgiveness -- Ahsoka didn’t think she deserved it anyways. The words had burst from him from where they’d been building up.

He was… disappointed in himself, Ahsoka realized. So disappointed in himself that he was choked by it; Ahsoka had heard it in his words as he had struggled to keep his voice even. Something had gone terribly wrong in this war, had shaken Rex’s sense of purpose long before the events aboard the Star Destroyer. With every man he’d lost, that confidence in himself had waned.

It was hard to be the one who survived. Did he feel he’d condemned his brothers by choosing her?

Ahsoka could see the flexing in his cheeks where Rex clenched and unclenched his teeth, how he adjusted his grip on his own wrist repeatedly, trying to steady himself again. Words failed her, but instead of the discomfort she expected to flood her, Ahsoka felt a calm focus settling over her.

She took a few steps forward, closing the distance and putting her hand on his shoulder, nudging him with the Force. She felt him draw a steady breath, and the tremors ceased.

“I’ll take that vow with you,” she said softly, affirmingly. “We will protect our friends together.”

Would there be any friends left to protect? Besides each other?

Rex gave a tiny shake of his head.

“Fives knew. Fives knew it all, and we still couldn’t change this,” he lamented bitterly.

“He changed _you_ , Rex,” Ahsoka assured him gently. “It’ll make the difference.”

Rex absorbed that for a moment, taking in the surety in her voice. Finally, he pushed himself up from his spot on the floor; Ahsoka took a step back to make room.

“What are we going to do, sir?” he finally said.

And for the first time ever in their lives, the title sounded almost inappropriate. Rex made a little perplexed face at her, noting that she had noticed it, too.

They both blinked at each other, not knowing where to go from here, before Ahsoka finally said,

“How about you just call me Ahsoka from now on?”

Rex nodded reverently. She saw the small spark of resolve return to his eyes.

* * *

Rex’s hair had begun to grow, a shock of black amongst the blonde where it had been shaven off to remove the inhibitor chip, and the longer portions already beginning their stubborn curl at even the slightest promise of actual length. Ahsoka saw him run his fingertips through it and make an unhappy face to himself. Hair grew fast, apparently; she wouldn’t know.

Ahsoka had had some practice, more than Rex, in hiding what she was. During the time she’d spent on Coruscant shortly after leaving the Jedi Order, she’d electively chosen not to let onto the fact that she used to be one. People had been suspicious of Jedi, mistrustful; they didn’t like what they didn’t understand, and what they saw as a great power in the galaxy. Ahsoka could see now how no one would have rushed to defend them in the wake of the end of the Clone Wars.

Rex was a smart man, adaptable and quick, but she’d seen him struggle the same way she had, cut loose in a galaxy when they’d come from nothing but structure. She watched the careful and discerning way he had taken to observing the citizens around him and tried to mirror their mannerisms in public, to fit the mold of a normal human man who _definitely_ wasn’t a clone soldier, or a deserter, or someone harboring a Jedi fugitive. She’d watched him grapple with the daily monotony of existence, the constant squeeze of anxiety and unsurety: of credits, and how they worked, where they’d come from, what they’d eat next. What they’d _do_ next. No one warned you of the boredom, the lack of direction, what it did to a mind, in the wake of an upheaval like this. No one in the Republic had thought to prepare a clone soldier for a life _after_ war. He’d known nothing else since infancy, and had told her as much. No one had prepared her for life after the Jedi, either.

Days could stretch into weeks, to months, without much to differentiate the passage of time. They hadn’t known right away what would come; they’d been cautious, hesitant to assume hope. Eventually, the reports started to reach them. News about “the Empire.” The Jedi. And Ahsoka knew then for sure that no one was coming to help them.

The Jedi were dead. The 501st as they knew it were dead. The Republic was dead. They were alone.

When Ahsoka couldn’t quite sleep, she’d meditate. It was easier, sometimes, and it helped quell the fear that came with the constant vigilance.

She was yanked out of her restful state by the sudden flare of emotion coming from Rex, who had jerked awake and was off the bedroll where he had been sleeping, his back pressed to the wall by the door of their apartment-of-the-week with his blaster raised by his head before her eyes had even opened, before the Force had warned her of a presence.

The sound of helmet-based comlinks and muffled mutterings of a security detail sweep. Very like the clones, and very _unlike_ them at the same time. Rex’s sharp eyes met hers in the dark.

_Stormtroopers._

She palmed her holodevice, pulling up an image of troopers outside their door from where the bug they had planted transmitted the scene. The Force was pressing Ahsoka with gentle urgings of danger… but no imminence. Rex was tensing; she could see him rocking slightly on his heels, ready to fight. From her spot still cross-legged on the sleep couch, she raised up a palm in a _wait_ gesture. Rex looked reluctant, but obeyed, watching her and the holo at the same time. After what felt like hours but was actually not even a whole minute, the troopers moved on. Rex started breathing again with a puff, sweat breaking at his hairline. They stayed like that for several more minutes before either of them moved or broke the silence. Finally, Ahsoka nodded.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said lowly.

* * *

Since Order 66, they’d only had each other.

Ahsoka looked over at Rex, felt the bond that had formed suddenly and irrevocably between them during the events of the Siege of Mandalore. Bonds meant something different for Jedi than they did to those less inclined in the Force. What she felt pass between her and Rex was different than what she had had with Anakin; Rex couldn’t feel the Force like Ahsoka could, but… it was still inarguably something more mystical than simple closeness. They could “sense” each other. Speak without words. Know when the other was looking. Move in perfect sync. Nothing she’d felt in the Force could rival that familiarity.

So they could both sense what was coming, long before they could speak it. Neither of them wanted to. But they were both bad at being idle, at standing by when something needed to be done.

It had started slowly, months ago, a dawning realization. It had hit Ahsoka one day, that while the rest of the former Republic slipped into Imperial dominion, their rights steadily squeezed away, that Rex, by jarring comparison, had never been a freer man; and he couldn’t have known less of what to do with it.

There it was again. A highly dramatized HoloNet report about the retirement of the clone army. About their defunctness. The reports had changed in tone as time passed: from celebrating the clones as heroes for putting down the Jedi uprising, to vilifying them as the face of a horrible war that should have never been named after them, to simply an unemotional and inhuman call to put them “out of commission.”

Like they were no different than droids.

Ahsoka glanced over without moving her head, just a flick of her eyes. Rex’s own were transfixed on the screen, his forehead working a worried knot of tension. She saw the helplessness in his frozen form. The stuckness.

She knew the same guilt he felt, living as a free man, in a galaxy where so many hadn’t made it out.

The broadcast ended. Rex’s eyes remained on the black void where it had been, though unfocused and far away.

The 332nd and what had been Rex’s 501st may have perished when their Star Destroyer had crashed, but Rex still had brothers back in the Core.

“Rex,” she said gently.

He twitched just slightly, knowingly, at her tone, didn’t look at her right away.

“I can tell it’s tearing you up,” she went on.

She didn’t need to say it out loud; he knew what she was talking about. She could see the tendons jumping nervously in his neck. Finally he twisted around to look at her from where he sat. His eyes were… sad.

“We can’t risk it,” he said, the words logical and unheartfelt. They practically _rang_ with dishonesty.

Ahsoka didn’t say anything, but her silence urged his weak explanations.

“We don’t know what happened to the inhibitor chips after Order 66,” he rattled, as if convincing himself for the hundredth time. “If there are aftereffects, if it’s a one-time thing; we have _no idea_ how any of my brothers would react to you. And we can’t risk bringing you back towards the Core. It’s just not safe.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” she interrupted.

His confusion at that gave him pause.

“What are you suggesting, then?” he finally queried.

Ahsoka felt a thick lump form in her throat; its intensity surprised her, but it shouldn’t have.

“I can’t go with you,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth sounding small, and to her like a stranger had uttered them.

Rex went suddenly rigid, frozen in his spot.

“ _What?_ ” was all he finally managed, when he realized what she was saying.

Ahsoka shook her head, looking at her boots and trying to control the way her brows wanted to knit in despondency and betray her resolve.

“I can feel that you want to help them,” she said. “But you’re right: I can’t put us at risk like that. I can’t go near the Core, can’t risk what would happen if we ran into other clones. We don’t know what could happen, but I won’t let you abandon them for m-”

“No,” Rex snapped before she could finish the word, shooting to his feet, a finality to the statement that said he wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ entertain this conversation. “We stick together. This isn’t an option.”

“Rex,” she prompted.

He began to pace a tight line in the cramped room, shaking his head and trying to control his rising panic.

“Don’t do this, Commander,” he clipped, refusing to look at her.

He hadn’t called her that in a time; a reversion in his heightened state.

“We have to separate,” she said, and the words _hurt_ like a blow.

He stopped pacing and met her eyes. He had that look on his face, like she was grinding him up from the inside out; that look when someone was being made to follow an order they didn’t want to, an order that would ruin them. All of his features seemed to fall into themselves with hot rejection.

“I don’t want that,” he managed in a raw tone, his head hanging in defeat and shame.

“You don’t owe me anything, Rex,” she soothed him, her heart breaking. “I’m not your commander, and you don’t belong to anyone.”

She closed the distance between them and put a gentle hand on his upper arm.

“You have to go to them,” she said. “I _know_ you do.”

She wasn’t telling him what to do. It wasn’t a directive. She simply said what she felt in his soul, what he wouldn’t say to her without it feeling like a betrayal.

What was an honorable man to do when he was pulled in two directions?

It came with bargaining: tense promises that they’d be able to stay in contact, that he’d drop anything -- _anything_ \-- and come if she called. It wasn’t instant, or immediate; they lingered, and planned, and when the day finally arrived, Ahsoka knew things would never be the same. She couldn’t know if this was the right choice.

It was just the only way forward for now.

Rex stood in front of her with a tight expression on his face and his hands tucked at his sides, but his usually ramrod posture looked deflated. Something loomed there between them, unfinished. _Rex_ wasn’t going to do it, she knew, because he was immaculate. As she felt her own face begin to crumble, she shot forward, knocking him back a step with the force of her embrace. She hugged him tightly around the waist, cheek pressed into his chest and forcing back the tears that threatened to fall. Rex was likely all she had left in the galaxy…

She felt the scratch of the beard he had grown, already showing shots of silver, brush the top of her montrals when he returned the gesture. Time would be another thing the galaxy had ripped from the clones. She was agonizingly aware of what time apart would mean when she saw him again. And she _would_ see him again.

They both seemed reluctant to release when they did. She had galaxies to say to him -- but she couldn’t think a word of it right now. Then Rex surprised her, being the one able to voice it.

“Serving under you, was my duty, but you, made it an honor,” he said, with a return to formality that had fallen away a long time ago. His voice softened. “I didn’t get to say that when you left the first time. I’m proud to have been there to see you become the General you are.”

She’d never been a general, but she knew what he meant. She still couldn’t find the words, but she held his hands in front of her, staring at their fingers for a long moment, before she finally let them slip out of her grasp. Rex readjusted the pack on his shoulders, expression setting in resolve, and turned away, beginning his slow journey back to the Core, back to his missing brothers, and to return with what remained.

“May the Force be with you,” she said after him.


End file.
